


It Begins and Ends with You

by Miserys-Toll (MiserysToll)



Category: American Horror Story: Apocalypse, American Horror Story: Coven, American Horror Story: Murder House
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apocalypse spoilers, Canon-Typical Language/Swearing, Canon-Typical Self Harm, Canon-Typical Violence, Coven Spoilers, F/M, Fix-It, I was just also born with angsty bitch disease, Mental Health Issues, Mild Sexual Content, Murder House Spoilers, There's a lot of fluff and romance too I swear, Time Travel, angsty teenagers, canon-typical child abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:53:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24866362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiserysToll/pseuds/Miserys-Toll
Summary: “You will be sent back to 1993,” Cordelia explains, “One year exactly to the moment before Tate's death. If you fail or if you die, you will return to the present and together we will watch the world end. You only get one shot.”Violet nods. She hides her anxiety beneath the mask of indifference she learned to craft so long ago and hopes the Supreme can’t see her hands trembling. She asks, “Even if I do prevent the massacre on September 7th, 1994, what stops him from going back to school and doing it the next day? Or the day after that?”“The house can’t manipulate him if you blow it to pieces,” Cordelia says, and her smile is so confident that Violet believes her.–Mallory sends Violet back in time to prevent the apocalypse.–
Relationships: Violet Harmon/Tate Langdon
Comments: 25
Kudos: 65





	1. I Appear Missing

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place as if Madison and Misty went to Murder House in season 8 episode 6 of Apocalypse (Return to Murder House) instead of Madison and Behold. Madison never blows the magical truth dust in Violet's eyes, because that seemed like a cheap solution to me. I have a lot of bones to pick with the writers of season 8 about a lot of things.
> 
> Obviously police and medical reports don't actually look like what I have written below. They are foreshortened for both the sake of readability and my own sanity.
> 
> This fic was inspired by SpaceMarineEvanPeters' fic titled "Fighting for the Other Side" on AO3, in which Tate was sent back in time. Be forewarned: it has a lot of adult themes. However, it is also a cleverly written crossover of several seasons of AHS combined, and it is worth the read!

_I go missing,  
_ _No longer exist  
_ _One day I hope  
_ _I’m someone you’d met_

_\- “I Appear Missing” by Queens of the Stone Age_

* * *

**2018  
** _August_

* * *

**Misty**

The crawl space is damp with the stench of mildew and rot, supported by termite-devoured stilts and cracked cement. Misty can sense the death on this plot of land—there’s so much of it, angry and wailing. When she closes her eyes, she can feel the aura of bones in the dirt, blood in the floorboards, flesh in the pipes and teeth in the chandeliers. The body parts may be separated, but the thread connecting them is visible in her mind’s eye like a gruesome spider web of guts. There’s a human finger in the belly of a dead fox, head smashed by a cinder block. She can see the spiritual string connecting the finger to a pile of blanched bones somewhere beneath the house, purple and miasmic. Connected to the brown glow of the rotting fox is a black tie to the ghost of two young twin boys. She can see their souls moving and undulating, spiteful and violent as they burn ants beneath a magnifying glass on the lawn. _Murderers_ , her heart seethes.

She finds the body of the fox first, shriveled in old age like a shrunken head. Its abdomen was once full of worms; she can see the trails they left through the remainder of its intestines that fall apart between her fingers as she recovers the purple glowing bone. She sniffles sadly, wiping her eyes on her wrist, leaving streaks of mascara behind. The knowledge that she could bring this poor creature back to life, but won’t, weighs heavily inside her. The fox’s pups are long dead, its burrow filled with roots, its purpose long wasted. She isn’t here to revive every lost soul on this cursed plot of land. Only one.

With the finger bones in hand, she drags herself to the remains of the skeleton hidden deep within the crawlspace. This purple soul is unique in that it’s completely isolated from the black web of murder stretched thin all around her. A suicide. Tears drip freely from Misty’s eyes and soak into the ground at the realization. Violet’s bones are intermingled with the scraps of old, dark fabric—a dress and a pair of tights and decaying shoes. The remains are at least five years old, by her estimation.

Misty lays out the silk sheet she brought with her on the dirty floor and gently moves the girl’s remains onto it. She wraps them up carefully and presses a kiss to the bundle of silk and bones, shutting her eyes and filling it with blessings. She is startled by someone harshly grabbing her by the wrist, and her eyes fly open.

The dead Langdon boy, Tate, glares at her in the darkness. His aura makes her nauseous, foul and sickening like a poisonous gas. She sees the trails of death he’s left behind. Black strings of ill intent connect him to bodies and anguished souls all around them, pulled taut, unclippable. He has hurt and killed so many.

“Don’t touch her,” he growls, tightening his grip on her flesh. She can feel her pulse throbbing under the pressure of his cold hand. Her stomach lurches. She’s never been touched by a ghost before, and it feels so _wrong._

“Let go of me,” Misty says through a hitched breath. Something about this contaminated vestige of a boy radiates not only hate, but some sick, twisted semblance of love. She doesn’t understand it, only that it’s intense and painful and she must get away as quickly as she can before she’s infected.

“I can’t let you leave with that,” Tate insists, looking like he’s being ripped apart from within, dark fathomless eyes shiny with tears. “Those belong to Violet.”

“I know, sweetheart,” Misty says, laying a shaky hand over the back of his, brushing his knuckles gently despite his painful hold on her. “We’re going to save her.”

Tate’s grip loosens as he digests her words, before he withdraws completely. “That’s impossible,” he denies, “We’re all stuck here. Forever.”

“Aw, darlin’,” Misty says, clutching the silken bundle against her chest. “There’s nothing that a little Louisiana mud can’t fix.”

* * *

**2011  
** _September_

* * *

**Violet**

Violet doesn’t know Tate is dead yet.

She can tell that something is a little bit off about the beautiful boy that sits at the foot of her bed, stroking his hand up and down her calf with an almost worshipful expression. His skin is just a few degrees too cold, slightly off pallor, his breath cool instead of warm as he presses light kisses to her flesh. But because it is impossible, it never occurs to her that he might not be alive.

“Stop it,” Violet says, waving him away with a quick glance from her history textbook. “That tickles.”

Tate peers up at her through his golden eyelashes before pressing another kiss to her shin. His smile is mischievous as he lightly sinks his teeth in. Her leg jerks involuntarily at the stinging sensation, and she halfheartedly kicks him in the shoulder with her sock-clad foot.

“You asked for that,” Tate says laughingly, and crawls across the bed to lie beside her. He rests his head on her shoulder and she adjusts her position to accommodate him. He always carries the strange scent of old library books, and she takes a subtle inhale of the comforting smell. She wonders if the library is where he goes when he’s not with her. They share a love for books.

“Sadist,” Violet replies absentmindedly as she flips to the next page.

Tate reads over her shoulder, absorbing the words faster than she does, his brows furrowed in concentration. A chapter on the Holocaust.

“It makes me sick to my stomach,” Tate says quietly, pointing to the grainy photo of a Nazi proudly waving a flag over a sea of death. “This guy probably worked too hard to support a wife he didn’t appreciate and two kids he completely ignored. And then the bastard prayed to God each night and thought he was a good person while he murdered half the country with no remorse.”

Violet pushes his hand away from the page so she can see the picture. “My dad would call it cognitive dissonance,” she says, “Believing in one ideal while doing something completely against it without even realizing he’s a complete hypocritical shit head.”

“I kind of understand him, in a way,” Tate says, and stares up at the ceiling. He chews his lip as though contemplating whether or not to continue.

Violet sticks a wrinkled bookmark between the pages and shuts the textbook, pushing it aside. She examines Tate’s profile, sharp bone structure softened by the dimming light of the setting sun through the window. His face is scrunched up as though he’s in pain.

“What do you mean?” Violet asks, combing her fingers through his curly mess of hair.

“The visions,” Tate reminds her softly, “I try to think of myself as a good person. I want to be one. But I get these images in my head where I do horrible things. I see myself crushing my mother’s throat, squeezing until her head pops. I see a dead little girl on the floor and her heart is in my hand, and I take a bite and feel full for the first time in my life. A good person doesn’t think about those things.”

Violet rolls over so that she’s straddling him, presses her forehead against his. She stares into his tear filled eyes, so brown they’re almost black. “You are a good person, Tate,” Violet says forcefully, “You’re drawn to the darkness like I am, but you don’t give in. You think I never imagine killing those assholes at school for what they put me through? We don’t go through with it, Tate. That’s what matters. They’re just thoughts.”

A tear slips from the corner of his eye and slides down his temple. She kisses the moisture from his skin. Tate threads his fingers through the hair at the nape of her neck and crushes his lips to hers, almost aggressively, like he wants to devour her whole. She returns it wholeheartedly, opening her mouth to accept his tongue as it flicks against hers. So different from their few stolen kisses they’ve shared so far, hesitant and gentle as if he was afraid to hurt her.

He flips their positions so that he’s on top, pins her wrists above her head.

“I want to make you feel good, Violet,” Tate begs, “That’s all I want.”

She takes a shaky breath and nods. Tate tangles his fingers through hers, kisses his way down her throat. He sucks at the skin until it grows flush with blood, little love bites blooming in his path. She arches her hips up toward him, wanting to get closer. He keeps his pelvis carefully angled away from hers, refusing to give her what she wants. He releases one of her hands so he can firmly stroke her ribs, massage her breast through her dress. Not for the first time, Violet is embarrassed by her modest curves, but Tate quickly kisses the anxiety away.

She uses her free hand to slip it beneath the hem of his shirt, brushing shy fingers against the smooth flesh of his toned stomach. His muscles jump beneath her touch, and he lets out a low groan at the contact. He leans further into it for a moment, but suddenly pulls away.

“What?” she asks as his mouth leaves her swollen lips. Their breaths flow heavily between them. He inhales her exhales, and she inhales his. “Did I do something wrong?”

Tate strokes his thumb over her flushed cheek, the touch achingly gentle after all of his insistent groping. He rolls away from her to lie on the opposite side of the bed. “You’re perfect, Violet. It’s just not the right time,” Tate says vaguely.

“What do you mean?” she presses.

“It’s all wrong,” Tate explains, “We need candles and rose petals and smooth jazz in the background.”

Violet sits up and squints at him, trying to figure out if he’s serious. She sees the twitch of a suppressed smile on his face, and she slaps him on the arm.

“You almost had me for a second,” Violet laughs, “Smooth jazz? Really?”

Tate grins at her, rubbing his arm though she knows she didn’t hit him that hard. “As funny as it would be if your dad walked in on us, I thought I’d save you the embarrassment.”

Violet sighs and tries to steady her heartbeat. She has an aching between her thighs that she tries to will away, though she can’t help but imagine Tate slipping those long, slender fingers beneath her cotton panties and diving into the pool of moisture there. She’s never been a sexual person, but something about Tate just makes her body sing. Makes her heart sing.

“Violet!” her mother calls from the other room, “Dinner’s ready!”

“You’d better sneak out the window,” Violet suggests as she slides off the bed. She checks her reflection in the mirror to make sure she doesn’t look like she’s been making out with her father’s mental patient in her bedroom. She brushes her hair down in front of her throat to cover the row of bite marks.

Tate comes up behind her and presses one last feather-light kiss to the back of her neck. “Whatever you say, Juliet.”

* * *

**2018  
** _September_ **  
******

* * *

**Violet**

Violet’s ghost fades in stages. She doesn’t know why it’s happening, but it’s a relief. After seven years of aimless wandering, she’ll be glad to go.

The fading begins when she reaches for a half-smoked cigarette one day, and her fingers go right through it. The sensation of passing through feels like dipping her hand in lukewarm water. _Huh,_ she thinks, _like a real ghost._ She walks away feeling irritated instead of panicked, not quite having reached her nicotine fix, and lies down in the brittle, unwatered grass to stare at the sky.

A week later, she stumbles upon Chad and Vivien making some hideous collage on the kitchen table, made out of discarded magazines left by a previous owner. Violet wonders what holiday it is this time. It’s been a long time since she cared to look.

“Your collage looks like what comes out of a corpse’s douched anus,” Violet says tonelessly as she takes a bite of an oatmeal raisin cookie on the counter, a gift from Billie Dean. “I can’t even tell what it’s supposed to be.”

Chad and Vivien continue to gossip between each other, commenting on Hayden’s pitiful attempts to draw fresh meat to the house for a wider variety of sex partners, without even a glimpse in her direction. Silent treatment, Violet figures. She is accustomed to daily parental neglect, and this method of discipline doesn’t hurt much more.

It isn’t until she sits next to Hayden on the gazebo that she realizes something’s wrong.

“Guess what bullshit my mom and Chad are saying about you,” Violet says, drawing her knees to her chest so she can rest her chin. The breeze is pleasant on her skin, and she lets her sweater slip off her shoulders so she can bask in it.

Hayden is silent as she watches Travis do pointless yard work, sweat glistening on his flawless shoulder blades and muscled back as he cleans fallen twigs and branches from beneath the trees. A bird hops along the fence, and he greets it with a smile.

“They say your prostitute impression is getting pathetic,” Violent continues, looking at Hayden for a response, “I don’t blame you though. I’ve heard enough through the walls to know that Travis always comes first.”

She waits another minute, expecting the usual outrage to explode from Hayden’s lips, but there is no reaction. As if Violet isn’t even there.

Tentatively, Violet reaches out to touch Hayden’s shoulder. The woman jerks away as if burned.

“Jesus, you can’t just show up like that! And who the hell said you could touch me?” Hayden shrieks, grabbing her chest as if fighting off a heart attack.

“I’ve been talking to you this whole time,” Violet replies irritably, “You were just too busy eye-fucking Travis to notice.”

“Hardly,” Hayden retorts, “He’s old news. I’m surprised he even knows how to use a rake with only two brain cells in that pretty head.”

“One’s for fucking, the other’s for yard work,” Violet suggests. She expects a stifled laugh, or half a smile.

Hayden doesn’t reply, only glances around boredly as if looking for something. “Violet? Where’d you go?”

Violet reaches out to touch her. “I’m right here,” she says shakily. Her hand passes through Hayden’s arm with that familiar sensation of tepid water.

“Bitch,” Hayden mutters under her breath once she determines she is alone.

Violet slinks away.

As the weeks pass, she knows Tate still watches her, though less and less frequently as her presence dwindles. He occasionally appears before her, emotional and ready to undoubtedly beg for forgiveness once again, but she shouts, “Go away, Tate!” before he can say a word. Her heart breaks a little more each time she sees the way his face is stricken with panic and grief before he blips away.

One morning, Violet’s body grows transparent. She sinks right through the bed, landing painlessly on the hardwood floor beneath it. Staring up at the warped bed springs, she wonders if tomorrow she’ll fall completely through the earth.

She walks silently through the house, feeling truly dead for the first time, now that she can’t interact with anything or anyone. She watches the house’s ghostly inhabitants as they move throughout their day. Patrick and Chad have the same rote screaming match in the nursery. Travis has the traditional pretend tea party with the girls, making funny voices for the teddy bears in the chairs beside them. Vivien has the usual repetitious argument with Nora about who the baby belongs to.

Violet stops as she reaches her father’s office. Tate sits curled up on the black leather couch across from Ben, and Violet’s first instinct is to flinch away, disappear around the corner before he can catch up to her and convince her to listen to his pretty words. But for the first time, Tate doesn’t even register her presence. He has always noticed her, even when no one else did. Against her will, her heart crumbles.

“You’re quiet today, Tate,” Ben observes, leaning comfortably back in his chair. “No goading words? Crocodile tears?”

Tate’s lower lip wobbles as though he’s thinking about it, but he bites down on it hard. His voice comes out hoarse and caustic. “Have you even noticed she’s gone?”

Ben looks bored. “Who is gone, Tate?”

“Violet!” Tate hisses, and gestures angrily around the room. “Your own daughter is gone, and you haven’t even noticed!”

“I’m here, Tate,” Violet whispers beside him.

Ben sighs deeply in his usual annoyance. “My daughter is a private person, and it’s not unusual for her to spend a few days in her room at a time. You need to accept that Violet doesn’t want to see you, Tate.”

Tate stands up furiously, and approaches Ben with a seething glare. “She’s fucking gone, you asshole. They took her!”

He collapses to his knees with a loud thump, and then the tears come. Tate buries his face in his hands and lets out a long, anguished cry. “I let them take her,” Tate confesses with a roar.

Violet finds herself dropping soundlessly by his side. “Who took me, Tate? What’s happening to me?” she pleads, suddenly desperate for an answer, apathy washed away. Her voice sounds distant, even to her own ears.

Ben stares down at Tate, pursing his lips as he decides whether or not to humor this bout of tears and dramatic exclamations. “What are you talking about?”

Tate wipes snot on his sweater sleeve and it leaves a long, wet stain. He unclenches a fist, revealing a clipping of dirty blonde hair tied together by an elastic. It takes Violet a moment to recognize it as her own. With disgust, she realizes he must have taken it from her body and preserved it carefully. A keepsake.

“They’re resurrecting her,” Tate whispers, stroking the hair absently.

Violet’s vision tunnels, and suddenly she’s free falling at terminal velocity. The icy wind feels like it’s tearing her flesh from her bones with its intensity, and it takes her a moment to realize she’s screaming. It hurts so much. She can’t remember ever feeling this much pain.

“Violet?” she hears Tate’s shattered voice. She can see him at the end of the tunnel, getting further and further away.

“Tate,” she mumbles. And then she disappears.

* * *

**Mallory**

It takes an entire month for Violet Harmon to be reborn.

Never has a single witch successfully resurrected a body dead so long, not even a Supreme. That remains the truth.

They take turns, breathing life into her remains and making offerings, drawing symbols of protection in blood on the altar where her bones reside. Myrtle crushes the shed skin of a komodo dragon into dust that she sprinkles over the cavern of ribs. Madison puts the cores of antonovka apples in the hollow eye sockets. Cordelia places the long tail feather of a phoenix over the row of vertebrae arranged carefully in a line. They burn candles and sage and they breathe. They breathe. And little by little, the body mends itself.

Under mounds of drying Louisiana swamp mud, cartilage forms between joints, veins spread like tree roots, flesh builds squishy and bloody in layers–hypodermis, epidermis, dermis. Eyelashes and arm hair and fingernails and toenails.

At the end of thirty days, the witches pull the soil away in chunks, revealing the body of a beautiful young girl in the ratty remains of a dark, soiled dress. She’s intact, but for one missing lock of hair.

Still dead.

“Are you ready, Mallory?” Cordelia asks softly, brushing muddy blonde hair away from the dead girl’s face. Mallory nods, and Cordelia gently pours streams of blessed water over the corpse from a crystal pitcher.

Once the pitcher is empty, Mallory presses her mouth to Violet’s stiff lips, and _breathesbreathesbreathes_ thoughts of life and magic and vitality into her. She envisions turning back time; the blood pressure that had weakened until the heart stopped, the brain death that followed, and most importantly, Violet’s desperate longing to die.

The body twitches to life with a violent spasm, and Mallory collapses dizzily into Cordelia’s waiting arms. Violet curls up on her side and vomits torrents of mud that stream from her nose and mouth, filthy tears leaving tracks down her face. She wretches and wretches until finally nothing remains but _life._

“Amazin’,” Misty breathes, her eyes lighting up with happiness. She throws her arms around Cordelia and Mallory both, and the three of them shriek in delight as Madison looks on.

“Mom? Dad?” Violet groans in disorientation.

Cordelia separates from the other girls and places a gentle hand on Violet’s forehead. “Welcome back to the realm of the living, Violet.”

* * *

**Cordelia**

Cordelia pours the trembling girl a cup of rooibos and sage tea made from clippings she grew herself. It is meant to mend bones, increase blood flow to the heart, and restore cognitive function. Violet’s teeth clink clumsily against the porcelain teacup as she takes a scalding sip. It will be a little while longer before her muscle control returns, for her head to clear of smog, and sensations to blossom across her skin.

“Can you tell me what your name is?” Cordelia asks calmly, taking a sip of her own tea.

“Violet...Harmon,” Violet says through chattering teeth as she slowly adjusts to her physical form. “Where are my mom and dad?”

Cordelia sits beside her on the floral patterned loveseat. “What do you remember, Violet?”

Violet’s eyes flit around the small room, from the creaking wooden walls lined with vines, to the sheer and tattered curtains, to the shelves upon shelves of herbs and weeds in Misty’s redone old shack. Searching for familiarity and finding none.

Cordelia passes her a faded photograph. In it, Violet is young, much younger than she is now, dressed in a black leotard and ballet shoes. Ben and Vivien Harmon hold her hands with wide grins on their faces, looking at each other with love in their eyes, so proud of the little girl between them.

Violet stares at it for a long moment as if digesting the image. Cordelia cringes as Violet crumples the photograph between her hands and tosses it carelessly on the floor.

“I died,” Violet says faintly and gulps down the rest of her tea. The shaking has stopped. “They’re dead, too.”

Cordelia nods solemnly. “But you’re back Violet, you’re alive. You’ve been resurrected.”

Violet sets the mug down on the coffee table with more force than intended, and it cracks in two. She surveys the damage with a curious expression, as though her hands are a foreign stranger’s.

“That explains why I feel like shit,” Violet replies. Suddenly, she meets Cordelia’s eyes with a petrified expression, clamping her fingers down on Cordelia’s arm. “What about the others? Did you bring them back, too? You can’t let them out! There’s _evil_ in that house.”

Images flash through Cordelia’s head, of guts and fear and knives and bullets. She glimpses a woman with a hole blown through her head, an endless stream of tears from glassy eyes. _Where is my baby?_ An abomination of an infant, with clawed hands and teeth like daggers, mutilated and angry. _Hiss._ The scorched remains of a mother with two burnt little girls (just collateral damage). _I want you to feel my pain._ The bloated corpse of a drowned woman and a friend with holes in her gut, leaking curdling blood. _Look what he did to me._

There’s so many of them, their screams building in Cordelia’s head, so loudly she thinks her eardrums will explode. She can feel their wounds on her own flesh, like she’s dying a thousand deaths, over and over.

Suddenly the pain ends. A young man with golden hair and dark eyes reaches out to touch her, crying. _You’re the only thing I need._

Cordelia wakes to find herself sobbing in a heap on the floor. Her girls are all around her. Misty’s hands in her hair, Myrtle’s palm on her heart, Mallory entangling her fingers with her own while Madison watches over them with feigned disinterest.

From the loveseat Violet says, “For a minute I thought I killed you.”

Myrtle helps pull Cordelia to a seated position, and Cordelia offers a watery smile. “It was just The Sight. It will take more than that to kill a Supreme.”

* * *

“We need you to go back,” Cordelia explains solemnly.

“Back?” Violet asks, “To Murder House?”

“Back in time,” Mallory corrects.

Violet searches their faces for any hint of humor, and she scoffs. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“We’re not,” Cordelia says, pinching the bridge of her nose to stem the lingering headache. “The world rests on your shoulders, Violet.”

“I’m just an idiot sixteen year-old girl who killed herself on a literal portal to Hell,” Violet argues spitefully, “How the hell am I supposed to help anybody?”

“You’re the sixteen year-old girl Tate Langdon fell in love with,” Cordelia clarifies, “The girl who fell in love with Tate Langdon. Unconditionally.”

Violent clenches her fists and growls through gritted teeth, “This is about Tate? Haven’t you heard? He killed over a dozen kids. He lit his stepfather on fire. He murdered the couple who lived in the house before us. He _raped_ my mom, and she fucking died giving birth to his hellspawn baby! There are some conditions that can’t be forgiven!”

“I didn’t say anything about forgiveness,” Cordelia replies calmly, “I said love.”

Violet flinches, but doesn’t deny it. Cordelia thinks of Hank’s bitter betrayal, the anger and resentment she feels. But she still has dreams of their wedding day.

“What if you could stop all of that from happening?” Cordelia asks hopefully, “What if you could go back and save him? Save all of us.”

“Just cut the shit and tell me what you want me to do,” Violet says with vitriol, “You want me to go back to the day before the massacre and fuck his brains out? I’m sure a good lay would send him on the right path.”

With a bitter smile, Madison jokes from the corner of the room, “If that was the plan, we’d have sent Zoe.”

“What?” Violet asks irritably.

“The evil within that house corrupts and manipulates the souls who enter, filling their heads with despair and malintent. There are some, like Tate, with dispositions that make them fall more easily under its influence,” Cordelia says, “And there are some like you Violet, with constitutions so strong that it can barely touch you.”

“That’s bullshit,” Violet says, “Tate’s responsible for his own actions. He wasn’t in the house when he killed all those kids. Even if the house manipulated him into killing Chad and Patrick, he _chose_ to do it with cruelty. He didn’t have to hurt my mom. And it was his decision to lie to me over and over again. He deserves to rot in hell.”

Cordelia walks to a bookshelf to peruse the tomes and files, and pulls out a manila folder that she passes to Violet. The printed label says ‘ _Langdon, Tate M_.’

“What is this?” Violet asks, flipping to the first page.

“Everything we have on Tate Langdon before the massacre, all the way from infanthood. It contains every injury, every grade and teacher evaluation, and all the notes from his school counselors. Read it and decide if he doesn’t deserve a second chance.”

* * *

**Violet**

The witches give Violet some time alone so she can read over Tate’s file. She doesn’t expect anything in it to change her mind, but a morbid curiosity does draw her to look through it. The first page is a photocopy of an old police report.

_LAPD Incident Report:_

Date: February 3, 1978  
Time: 7:04 PM  
Type of Incident: Domestic Disturbance

“PD responded to 911 call from a distressed woman identifying herself as Mrs. Constance Langdon, accusing her husband, Mr. Hugo Langdon, of attempting to drown their twin infants in the bathtub. Upon officer arrival, the family was calmly seated at the kitchen table, eating dinner. Mrs. Langdon apologized to the officers for calling and said she was mistaken. Daughter Adelaide and son Tate were wet from the bath but unharmed. Daughter Rose was wet and police officers were alarmed to find she had no eyes. Mr. Langdon was able to provide medical proof that Rose had been born with anophthalmia. Officers departed with no further incident.”

Right off the bat, Violet is already surprised. Rose had hidden from the Murder House residents until Constance’s recent death, and she still remained quiet and elusive. Violet hadn’t known that eyeless little girl was Tate’s twin sister. He must have been so young when she died.

_LAPD Incident Report:_

Date: December 25, 1980  
Time: 1:23 AM  
Type of Incident: Murder, Alleged Robbery

“PD responded to 911 call from unidentified neighbor reporting sounds of screaming from 1120 Westerchester Place. When officers arrived, the front door and all windows were locked and secure. Upon breaching the door, officers found the home in disarray. In the basement, Officer Randall discovered Mrs. Constance Langdon, Mr. Hugo Langdon, and their children Tate and Adelaide bound and blindfolded. The body of daughter Rose was found cut open with her heart removed. Neither parent could provide a physical description of their assailant, but Tate told Officer Randall that the doctor who lives in the basement killed his sister. The pregnant Mrs. Langdon was rushed to the hospital after her water broke mid-questioning.”

Violet wants to be unphased by the report. She knows what sorts of things Dr. Montgomery does to those who wander into the basement, and it’s not a surprise anymore. But the mental image of three year-old Tate seeing a ghost kill his sister with no one to believe him causes a dull pain in her gut.

_LAPD Incident Report:_

Date: June 3, 1982  
Time: 6:28 PM  
Type of Incident: Missing Child

“PD responded to 911 call from woman identified as Mrs. Constance Langdon. Mrs. Langdon told police her five year-old son Tate had been missing for 26 hours. When asked why she didn’t report the incident earlier, she said she mistakenly believed she had to wait at least 24 hours before reporting. Within the hour, officers responded to call from Natural History Museum receptionist claiming an unattended child had climbed into the dinosaur exhibit and refused to be removed. Child was identified by officers as Tate Langdon. Tate told officers he climbed into the exhibit because the dinosaurs asked him to. He had multiple injuries he ascribed to falling from a ledge at the beach. Primary care physician examination attached.”

_Medical Report_

Name of Patient: Tate, Langdon M.  
Date of Birth: August 13, 1977  
Gender: Male  
Date of Visit: June 3, 1982  
Name of Physician: Dr. Pierce Harold

“Diagnosis:

Bruising to right eye, rib cage left side, left and right forearm, left and right bicep.  
Treatment: Applied cold compress to bruised areas.

Uniform cuts on left and right forearms, chest, and chin.  
Treatment: Cleaned injuries with antiseptic solution and applied bandages.

Reported intense pain in left rib.  
Treatment: X-ray requested.

X-ray denied by custodial parent due to financial concerns.”

Violet just shakes her head at every suspicious detail and flips to the next page.

_Counseling Session_

Student: Tate Langdon  
Age: 6  
Homeroom Teacher: Ms. Barton  
Date: September 12, 1983

“Tate was referred to my office by Ms. Barton when he was still inconsolable two hours after morning drop off. When given a lollipop, Tate calmed down and told me “Daddy doesn’t want me and Addie and Beau anymore.” Over the phone, Mrs. Langdon told me her husband left them for another woman after an extramarital affair, and Beau is Tate’s imaginary friend. I told Tate that if he starts to feel sad again, he can talk to his friend Beau or come visit me in the office for a hug.

-Miranda Maddox”

Violet rolls her eyes at Constance’s blatant lies. Hugo is generally avoidant of the rest of the ghosts, but sometimes she sees him leaving the house on Halloween night, pockets full of condoms. And she’s played ball with Beauregard enough times to know that Tate’s little brother was not only real, but deserved so much better than he got.

She rubs her sore eyes with the heels of her palms, feeling worn out and drained by all of the tragedy and neglect. Even after moving out of the house in 1984, reports of delusions and hallucinations completely unrelated to ghosts seemed to plague Tate’s life as soon as something stressful happened.

In 1986, the day after Addie was hospitalized with a concussion from falling down the stairs, Tate had to be picked up early from a field trip at the zoo when he kept screaming that someone was killing the flamingos. On his birthday in ‘88, he was found standing on the highway at midnight and he told police officers that he couldn’t remember how he got there. In ‘91, he got detention for bashing a hole in the wall of the boy’s restroom with a pipe because he thought he heard crying on the other side. The principal accused him of lying and said the vandalism was in response to being told he would have to repeat the grade if he didn’t get his grades up by the end of the semester. Those incidents are only a few examples of many.

Tate’s breaks with reality never hurt anyone but himself until 1993, the year his family moved back into that hellhole. It would be so easy for the evil in that house to toy with someone like Tate, whispering lies in his ears when he was at his most vulnerable. Violet shuts the file and tosses it across the room, where papers and photographs spill out like intestines. She wants to hate him for everything he’s done. She desperately wants to.

“Damn it,” she mutters, and leaves the shack to find Cordelia.

* * *

“You will be sent back to 1993,” Cordelia explains, “One year exactly to the moment before Tate's death. If you fail or if you die, you will return to the present and together we will watch the world end. You only get one shot.”

Violet nods. She hides her anxiety beneath the mask of indifference she learned to craft so long ago and hopes the Supreme can’t see her hands trembling. She asks, “Even if I do prevent the massacre on September 7th, 1994, what stops him from going back to school and doing it the next day? Or the day after that?”

“The house can’t manipulate him if you blow it to pieces,” Cordelia says, and her smile is so confident that Violet believes her.

* * *

**Mallory**

Mallory knows she’s the next Supreme, that she’s destined to be greater than any Supreme before her. She feels her power growing each day, crackling to life beneath her skin like an electric current. Cordelia taught her to embrace her abilities, told her she was born to save lives and ease suffering and bring beauty to the world where there was none, and Mallory believed her. Until she met Michael Langdon and witnessed all of the destruction in his wake.

Now, all Mallory does is fear.

It’s with dread and anxiety that she eases into the sensory deprivation bath. Violet is already floating on the surface, staring at the ceiling blank-faced, hair fanned around her like a painted halo. She’s whispering so softly that Mallory doesn’t notice until she’s treading water right beside her.

“-them I’m okay. I’m going to fix it,” Mallory hears before she tilts her head back to rest her ears below the water’s surface. The silence is supposed to be comforting, but she can feel the lightning in her veins begging for release. She tells herself that this is the goal, to unleash her power without restraint, that nothing short of a supernova can send Violet back a quarter of a century and actually keep her there.

She speaks the cantations with soft vowels and sharp consonants, only faintly aware of the building stench of blood and the rolling boil of the water around her. The spell drains her power like a siphon in a fluid-filled lung, relieving the overwhelming pressure and bringing her a sense of euphoria unlike she’s ever felt.

And then she stops feeling anything at all.


	2. I Will Help You Swim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of Tate POV in this one! I hope I do him justice.
> 
> As a note, I dissociated a lot before I started taking medication, but I've never had a psychotic episode. If you have a mental illness with psychosis as a symptom, feel free to tell me how horribly unrealistic I've written it!
> 
> TW: a quick moment of canon-typical fat shaming.

_You stopped by my house the night you escaped  
_ _With tears in my eyes, I begged you to stay  
_ _You said, "Hey man, I love you, but no fucking way!"_

_-”Twin Size Mattress” by The Front Bottoms_

* * *

**1993  
** _September_

* * *

**Adelaide**

Addie kicks the Buick’s front tire over and over with impatience as she waits for her mother and Tate to stop arguing. They’re always arguing about something, though Addie doesn’t pay attention why most of the time. If she ever walks in on them, Constance yells at her for being a Nosy Nancy and sends her to the closet if she’s in a bad enough mood.

“-the fuck outta here! I don’t want to see ya!” Addie hears Constance shout. Tate’s backpack hits the driveway with a thump and the band pins fly off in all directions. Seconds later, Tate hits the driveway as well, landing on his back in a way that looks like it hurts.

He dusts himself off and grabs his backpack before coming over to watch Addie kick the tire. “What did the car ever do to you?” he asks, acting as if nothing happened. Tate is good at pretending, but he can’t fool her. Her brother is sad and angry.

Addie stops her kicking. “Can we go to school now?” she asks, ignoring his question. He was being silly anyway.

Tate smiles and suggests, “Actually, I have another idea. I was thinking that since we’re already late, we could get donuts. Thirty more minutes won’t hurt anybody.”

Addie claps her hands with excitement, and Tate laughs in response. “I love donuts!” she says, and her bad mood goes away, “Can we drive there?”

Tate shoots her a look that means she already knows the answer, and he starts walking away without her. She follows quickly after him. His legs are longer than hers and he always walks too fast.

Addie is already very sweaty by the time they reach the donut shop, and the short sleeves of her polkadot dress stick damply to her armpits. Tate looks unhappy in his oversized sweater, but he never rolls up his sleeves no matter how hot it is. One time when she went into his room to borrow chalk so she could draw on the sidewalk, he had thin red lines across his skin and they were bleeding. Tate said a cat scratched him, but it was already gone so she couldn’t pet it. Addie knew he was lying; she’s seen the monster in the basement, and she knows what it does to people. Tate hides the scars from everyone, even her.

“Why don’t you go sit by the window and I’ll get the donuts?” Tate suggests as they enter.

Addie nods. “I want a pink donut!” she reminds him and climbs up on the stool, enjoying how tall it makes her. Almost as tall as Tate.

Tate goes to the counter and speaks quietly to the cashier, and they do a weird handshake that Addie doesn’t think she could copy. She watches carefully to make sure that Tate chooses the right donut––the one with the pink frosting and no sprinkles, not the one with chocolate frosting and pink sprinkles. Tate trades the cashier a large wad of bills for the paper bag of donuts.

Addie eats her treat on the way to school, licking the melting icing off her fingers. It’s sweet and doughy and delicious, and it would drive Constance crazy if she knew Addie was eating it. She would say it will make her even more of a fatty.

“That was a lot of money,” Addie says to Tate, “Donuts are expensive.”

Tate just hums in response, not really paying attention. He looks like he’s thinking hard about something, so she stops talking until they get to the school for special kids.

“Go show the other kids how much smarter you are than them,” Tate says with a smile and a wave before he turns to leave.

“Bye, Tate!” she yells after him. She can’t wait to brag to Sammy about getting donuts for breakfast.

* * *

**Tate**

Tate covertly fishes the small plastic baggy of cocaine from the bottom of the donut sack and sticks it in the back pocket of his fraying jeans. He tosses the sack in the garbage with the pastry still inside––his gut still hurts from Constance sucker punching him before she shoved him out the front door, and he’s hardly hungry.

“You’re late, Mr. Langdon,” Jolene drawls from the front office as soon as he sets foot in the building. She would be a total MILF if it weren’t for the fact that she wears the exact same perfume as Constance, and a hell of a lot of it. Her tops are always way too low cut to be professional, but he’s not complaining about that part.

“Good morning, Jolene,” Tate greets her with a charming smile and a quick peek at her ample cleavage.

“That’s Mrs. Jackson to you,” she says irritably, already scribbling out a tardy slip for him to take to class. It’s a tired routine by now, his overdue arrivals happening more and more often since the beginning of the school year, but’s hard to see the fucking point in showing up when everyone knows he won’t amount to anything anyway.

“Of course, Mrs. Jackson,” Tate says, taking the slip of paper from her with a wink. Her poorly suppressed smile is a pleasing reward.

He ducks into the nearest restroom on his way to Geometry, fully intent on indulging in his little purchase before he has to sit through the drudgery of the tail-end of a lecture on different types of triangles. A short investigation of the stalls assures him that the coast is clear, and he secludes himself in the stall farthest from the door. He’s already decided to roll up his tardy slip to snort the coke with, and prides himself on the humor of it.

He’s just about to pour out the powder to cut it into lines when he hears sniffing and scratching at the restroom door. _Goddamn it_ , Tate thinks, _drug dogs._ For a moment he considers snorting it anyway and just dealing with another possession charge, but if they sent him to juvie it would be a total drag. With regret, he drops the expensive purchase into the toilet bowl and flushes it right as the campus security officer barges in. Tate casually exits the stall to wash his hands and bows his head innocently to the officer.

“What are you doing in here?” the officer asks suspiciously, tapping his foot on the cracked tile while the dogs thoroughly explore the cramped and filthy space.

Tate raises his eyebrows at the stupid question. “Taking a shit,” he replies bluntly, then teases, “Are you on doggy daycare duty?”

The officer looks bored and unimpressed at the goading words, already as sick and tired of being in the perpetually shit-stenched room as Tate. “Get to class. Now,” he orders humorlessly.

Tate dries his hands extra slowly just to irritate the man, and departs with a smarmy grin.

* * *

**Violet**

Violet is thoroughly disoriented when she opens her eyes and finds herself standing outside a roller rink that she’s pretty sure was a designer boutique the last time she saw it––although admittedly, she only goes out once a year. Thankfully, it’s way too early for kids to be out of school, and the parking lot is almost completely empty except for a vintage-looking Toyota that probably belongs to the owner, so she doubts anyone noticed her spontaneous appearance.

The asphalt feels scorching to the bottom of her bare feet, and she quickly flees to a nearby patch of grass to ease the pain. The intensity of physical sensations still overwhelms her, though she’s been alive for three days already. She hadn’t realized how dull everything felt when she was a ghost until Misty gave her a fresh strawberry yesterday and the decadent flavor almost sent her into shock.

She has to get out of the sun, or she’ll get sunburn. The idea of it pulls near-delirious giggles from her chest. The concept of the physical world around her actually having an impact on her wellbeing is a preposterous notion. When she was dead, she occasionally spent a curious afternoon cutting off her fingers one by one to watch them grow back, but the pain was mild and she’d grown quickly desensitized to it. Half of pain for ghosts comes from fear, she discovered quickly. Once she was able to acknowledge that nothing could kill her, self-vivisections became the way to spend a lazy Sunday.

Now she has a body, fragile and precious, and everything she does has a consequence. The endless possibilities ahead of her are almost overwhelming. She can get an ice-cold milkshake and drink it so quickly she gets a brain freeze. What does a brain freeze feel like, again? She can find a pool and go swimming, choke on the water and rediscover the burn of chlorine as it stings her eyes and sloshes around in her sinuses. There are mountains in California. She can climb a mountain! For the first time, it finally sinks in that she’s out of that godforsaken mansion of death.

A ladybug lands on her little toe, and the tickle of its tiny feet on her skin brings her back to herself. She has a mission. But first, she needs a pair of shoes.

* * *

**Tate**

By the time last period Biology rolls around, Tate feels like he’s been at school for days instead of hours. Still, listening to teachers drone on about stuff he already knows is marginally more appealing than going home, since Larry should be coming back from his business trip around now.

“I hope you all remembered that we’re dissecting frogs today! It’s so exciting, right? My favorite time of year,” Mrs. Robenelle says enthusiastically.

Tate sits up a little taller in his chair at the thought of doing something different for a change. He read all the anatomy books in the library a few times, but he’s never dissected anything. He’s always been curious, but he isn’t sick enough to go looking for roadkill in his spare time, despite what some of his peers probably think. When you do things like eat a bowl of mayonnaise and jalapeños for lunch just for attention, people start rumors all the time. He makes it into a kind of sport, seeing what he can do to make the rumors evolve into something even more bizarre and alienating. He particularly enjoys the one about him fucking a bottle of hot sauce. Sometimes he thinks about actually trying it, just for the experience, only really prevented by the idea of permanently damaging his big dick.

Ms. Robenelle assigns lab partners, and sharp tools and trays of dead things are passed around like a potluck dinner. Kevin Gedmen takes a reluctant seat beside him, looking like he might hurl any second. The thought of it and the chain reaction it might cause is rather amusing to Tate. He can already hear the giggling and sounds of disgust from his classmates building into a steady hum.

“Oh man,” Kevin says, wiping nervous sweat from his forehead, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

Tate gives him a level stare and tries to sound reassuring. “It’s dead, Kevin. It can’t feel pain.”

Kevin nods, but still looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. He taps his fingers on the desktop anxiously and shuffles his feet like he’s thinking of running away. He dresses like a tough guy, but acts far from it. It kind of endears him to Tate, in a way. It’s nice to catch a glimpse of the person beneath the projected stereotype, and Tate finds himself wishing for a moment that he and Kevin could be friends.

“Do you want me to do it and you can take notes?” Tate suggests, taking pity on him.

Kevin nods again, this time with visible relief. Tate picks up the scalpel and poises it over the frog’s chest.

“Okay everyone!” Ms. Robenelle calls for attention, “On your marks, get set, cut!”

The frog’s skin is much thinner than his own, and requires surprisingly less pressure than he would use to cut himself. The already astringent smell of the specimen increases in pungency as its innards are exposed to the open air. Kevin makes a low groaning sound like he’s been punched in the kidney.

Everything slows to a stop.

Tate looks around the room, puzzled by the silence and the stillness. The fluorescent light bulbs overhead begin to flicker, dimming and brightening and oversaturating the room around him.

“Care to help me out here?” he hears, and looks back at the table.

The frog looks up at him with a hopeful expression, wiggling her body as much as she can with pins stuck through her webbed feet.

“Is this real?” Tate asks, just for clarification.

The frog lets out an offended huff and rolls her eyes. “Of course I’m fucking real. Are you going to help me or not? My feet hurt.”

Tate nods and quickly removes the pins.

“Ow, careful,” the frog says as he removes the last one. She massages the small incision in her chest, leaking old blood and formaldehyde that makes tiny pools in the aluminum tray.

“I’m sorry,” Tate says, “I didn’t know you were still alive. I wouldn’t have cut you.”

The frog flips from her back to her belly and takes an experimental hop on her injured feet. “Have you seen my eggs? They’re supposed to hatch soon. There have been a lot of black birds around, and I need to protect my babies from getting eaten.”

Tate shakes his head apologetically. “I think they already hatched. You’ve been in the formaldehyde a long time.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” the frog says bitterly, “ What’s wrong with you assholes? You abduct us, sever our spines and pull out our brains for your little experiments. In the name of _science._ If you want to know how an organ system works, then why don’t you dissect each other?”

Tate glances at Kevin. They don’t know each other very well, though Tate can tell they’re into the same bands. One time when Kevin rolled up his sleeves, Tate saw the words ‘ _he screams but doesn’t want to listen’_ tattooed on his arm. Nine Inch Nails lyrics. It’s a good song.

“I don’t want to hurt him,” Tate argues, “He’s never done anything to me.”

“Go for the spine first. Sever the nerves and he won’t feel a thing,” the frog encourages, “Don’t you want to know what makes him tick?”

Tate holds his scalpel up to the light, watching the reflective glow it casts against the wall. It’s probably sharp enough, but he doesn’t know the right place to cut. He might botch it, missing the nerves as he makes slice after slice in Kevin’s flesh. There would be so much blood. Kevin would be so afraid. No one deserves to feel that kind of fear.

“Do it,” the frog urges, abruptly sounding a lot like his mother, “Coward! You’re pathetic, Tate! Pathetic!”

“Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!” Tate screams, and plunges the scalpel into the back of his hand, so deep the blade scrapes across the desk underneath.

Suddenly the world is moving again. The frog is silent and dead, the corpse still pinned against the tray. Kevin is screaming, and for a panicked moment, Tate fears he’s done it. That he’s given in.

“What did you do, Tate?” Ms. Robenelle asks, falling to her knees beside him. She yanks the scalpel from Tate’s flesh and it hits the linoleum floor with a tiny clattering sound. He finally registers the searing pain, the blood pouring from his own hand. He did it. He fought it off.

“I won,” Tate says with a pleased grin, proudly showing his gathered classmates the damage he’s done. Kevin vomits on the floor.

* * *

“I cleaned the wound and stitched it up, good as new. Keep it bandaged for a few days to prevent infection, and change it if it gets wet. Send him back in a week and we’ll take the stitches out,” Dr. Harold says, and hands Constance a sheet of instructions. His handwriting is chaotic and illegible, but she accepts it anyway.

“Thank you, doctor,” she tells him gratefully, and takes his hand in hers. Phony tears spring to her eyes and she lets out a pitiful sniffle. “I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

Tate rolls his eyes at his mother impatiently. She flirts with every ugly bastard that makes good money, despite Larry’s pathetic devotion. He won’t be surprised if she sucks the doctor off later as payment for the stitches.

“How did he get hurt, if you don’t mind me asking?” the doctor asks, “Tate was pretty tight-lipped about the whole thing.”

“Oh, it was just a little accident at school. They’re dissecting frogs this week and a classmate tripped and fell on him.” Constance fibs, pulling away from the doctor to tuck the paper into her purse. “I don’t know why they still allow such butchery. It’s the nineties for Christ’s sake!”

Dr. Harold laughs at her apparent disgust. “We wouldn’t have surgeons without dissection, Mrs. Langdon. Take care of your boy and we’ll see him in a week!”

Constance is eerily quiet on the way to the Buick, though Tate knows it’s just the calm before the storm. As expected, she shoves him hard against the car door before slapping him sharply across the face. It stings, and tears spring to his eyes without permission.

“What is wrong with you?” Constance hisses at him, “Are you trying to embarrass me? What will the other mothers say when they hear of what you did?”

“They’ll say you’re a shitty mother,” Tate says dully, “They’ll say you’re a goddamn cocksucker who can’t control her kids.”

Constance slaps him across the other cheek before getting in the driver’s seat. “Get in,” she demands through the open window, “You’ve wasted enough of my evening.”

Tate shakes his head and flips her the bird as he walks away, leaving her to drive home seething and alone.

* * *

The sun has almost set completely by the time Tate reaches the beach. There’s only a sliver of bronze peeking over the horizon, bathing the sea in threatening shades of red and black. His socks and shoes are tucked away in his backpack, and he relishes in the feeling of cool sand beneath his feet as he comes upon his favorite spot. An isolated cove of sea-smoothed stones and the sharp edges of shells hiding beneath the dunes.

He tosses his backpack carelessly aside and it slumps against the damp cove wall, where it narrowly avoids crushing a crab that quickly scuttles away. Tate offers it a quiet apology as he takes a seat in the growing darkness. He closes his eyes and basks in the soothing sound of crashing waves, and he pictures being dragged out to sea. He imagines sinking into the black abyss, and wonders if the water would be warm or cold as it filled his lungs to the brim, if he would fall into a bed of seaweed and into an endless sleep.

Images of Beau chained in the attic like a tamed beast and Addie isolated in a mirrored room of her own personal horrors flash behind his eyes, and his fantasies of death dissipate like smoke in the wind. He can’t abandon them, can’t leave them with Constance and Larry.

When he opens his eyes, he sees a figure dressed in black further down the beach, dimly illuminated by the full moon. For a moment he believes it to be the grim reaper, having heard his calls. Then the figure lights a cigarette and walks into the tide, thigh deep.

Captivated, Tate leaves his sanctuary and approaches the silhouette slowly, almost afraid to spook it. It takes the form of a slender young woman in a shapeless black shift dress, ash blonde hair gleaming in the moonlight. She’s beautiful.

“The riptide is stronger at night,” Tate warns her, “You might get swept away.”

She flicks ash from her cigarette into the foamy water and it’s immediately washed away. “Can’t die twice,” she replies ominously, staring off into the distance.

Tate doesn’t know how to reply to that, so he doesn’t. He wants her to look at him. He wants to know the color of her eyes, wants to know if they’re bottomless as the ocean, if she’ll look at him or right through him like everyone else does.

“Do you have another?” Tate asks and gestures to her cigarette. She pulls a pack from the pocket of her sweater and offers him a stick, still carefully avoiding eye contact. He wades into the water to stand beside her and doesn’t even notice the soaking of his clothes and skin. She passes the lighter to him without a word, but when he scrolls the flint wheel, nothing comes out. 

“I think you’re out of lighter fluid,” he tells her.

Finally, she turns toward him with the cigarette between her lips, and surges up on her toes. He slides his borrowed cigarette through his own lips, bows his head, and they press the ends together to pass the flame between them. Their faces are mere inches apart, glowing from the lit cherry, and when their eyes meet he feels a rush in his veins so much stronger than a cocaine high. He can tell she feels it too. Her wide moonlit eyes are shiny and copper, the color of a new penny.

A wave drags her off her toes and she loses her balance, knocking into him. Both cigarettes fall into the water and disappear as he catches her in his arms. She’s warm and soft and almost weightless, and swearing like a sailor.

“Shit. Fuck. Goddamnit,” she says, fingers knotting in the fabric of his shirt as she tries to regain her footing. Tate laughs, almost giddy from her touch, a foreign state of bliss.

Then, balance restored, she releases him without a word. She takes her warmth with her as she heads back toward the shore, escaping the ocean that betrayed her. Her sodden dress clings to her slender legs, moisture draining from the fabric into rivulets on the sand. He follows after, noticing the sogginess of his own clothing for the first time. The salty seawater has soaked into his bandage, stings the wound in his hand as though he’d plunged the scalpel into his flesh a second time.

She keeps walking, getting further and further away from him with each step. A large part of him wants to go with her, but another tells him to let her go, that he’ll see her again.

“What’s your name?” he calls after her.

She turns to face him for just a moment, and in her silence, appears to consider whether or not to tell him. Then, she sings in a wavering, unpracticed voice, “ _Shy as a violet. Most people don’t please me. Feelings don’t come easy when you don’t belong._ ”

Upon his blank stare, she explains dryly, “My mom had a shitty taste in music.”

She runs away and doesn’t look back.

* * *

**Violet**

She sinks against the door of her apartment like a wilting flower as soon as it’s shut behind her, her trembling legs giving out beneath her. For a moment she wonders if she’s having a heart attack, if at any moment she’ll be spirited back to 2018 to watch the world end after dying a stupid, stupid death. She can’t breathe, the tightness in her chest so painful she feels like her lungs might pop. She’s freezing, teeth chattering violently as she pulls at the sweater she wears, desperate to get rid of the wet, constricting clothes.

She touched him. He was hot and solid and smelled nothing like old library books, more like a mix of denim and California heat and teenage boy. Stained with none of the death and years of betrayal, falling into him felt so much like coming home that it was absolutely _terrifying._

Then she realizes she’s not dying. She’s having a panic attack. The knowledge is relief enough that she is able to steady her breathing. Breathe out, _then_ in. There is air, if she makes room for it in her lungs. She recovers slowly, steadily, then pulls herself to a shaky stand. She kicks her stolen sandals into the corner of the room, and pulls off the remainder of her clothes. They fall to the floor with a wet splat. She will hang them up in the bathroom after she’s made herself a nice cup of tea, assuming there are any tea bags in the cabinet. She wants a cigarette, but the entire pick-pocketed pack is soaked.

The modest studio apartment belongs to all descendants of Salem, protected by a glamour that prevents anyone from seeing the entrance unless they already know it’s there. Even though Cordelia had assured Violet before her travel that the unit was vacant for most of the 90s, she had still been skeptical of how to convince the apartment manager to give her the key. But when she met with the manager in the early afternoon, the elderly woman already had it ready for her.

“Clairvoyance,” the woman told her with a wink, and that was that.

Violet finds a box of stale crackers and some ginger tea bags, which she makes into a very pathetic dinner. The idea of going to the grocery store had at first been exciting, until she spent twenty minutes standing outside it, too anxious to go in and surround herself with so many people after years of isolation. Now as her stomach growls with dissatisfaction, she realizes that tomorrow she won’t have a choice. As a living person, she actually has to do things like eat and drink, and tiresomely enough, use the toilet.

Once she’s finally settled in for night, she climbs into what feels like a stranger’s bed and curls up beneath the hand-sewn quilt. She’s asleep before she even gets the chance to worry about how in the world she’s going to blow up the Murder House.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was 3 months old in September of 1993. Let me just tell you, a lot of stuff I thought was a 90s era thing was actually like a 2000-2002 thing, which makes sense because I didn't have a hell of a lot of brain power as a little tot. I have to fact check everything to make sure the stuff I include existed in 1993 and it was exhausting. Now I want an Orbitz drink (not created until 1997).
> 
> And listen. I'm a Texan. I've only been to LA once, and not only do I barely remember it, I'm pretty sure California was pretty different in 1993 vs 2013. I guess I couldn't say for sure, though.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the chapter! I appreciate comments and kudos :-)


	3. The Antidote to Everything Except for Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote this whole chapter twice until I got it how I wanted. Hopefully it's enjoyable!
> 
> TW: a character uses the R-word slur later on in the chapter.
> 
> Edit: I'm so sorry it's taking so long for another update. I have depression and it's really bad right now, which makes it hard to want to work on anything. Thank you for being patient!

_A constellation of tears on your lashes  
_ _Burn everything you love  
_ _Then burn the ashes  
_ _In the end everything collides  
_ _My childhood spat back the monster that you see_

_-“My Songs Know What you Did in the Dark” by Fall Out Boy_

* * *

**1993  
** _September_

* * *

**Tate**

Tate wakes up the next morning with the overwhelming fear that he completely imagined the girl in black.

The conversation with the dead frog obviously wasn’t real, but it’s not completely unheard of for him to have more than one episode in a day. How many times has he seen someone else at his oceanside sanctuary? He can’t remember it ever happening. His clothes from the night before are stiff with seasalt, but all that means is that he went to the beach, not necessarily that he shared a cigarette with a girl who made his world light up like a New Year’s sky.

He’s so caught up in trying to relive every moment from the night before that he doesn’t even think to tell Larry to fuck off when he calls him _son._ He’s too busy trying to remember the lyrics to the song she sang, the exact tune, to react when Constance throws her mug at him for making shitty coffee. It’s a good sign that he can’t remember the song, right? That means he probably didn’t come up with it himself. _Shy as a violet_. That’s all that comes to mind, and he rolls it through his head over and over.

“What happened to your hand?” Addie asks, dragging him to the present. They’re already halfway to her school, much to his surprise. He barely noticed the walk in his state of distraction.

“Mom didn’t tell you?” Tate asks, glancing down at his sloppily bandaged hand. He didn’t try very hard to get it right when he wrapped it after his shower this morning.

“Mother doesn’t tell me anything,” Addie says dejectedly, “She still treats me like a kid.”

“That didn’t bother you when she let you rent _The Little Mermaid_ from Blockbuster the other night,” he points out, trying to distract her, “What’s the mermaid’s name again? Annabelle or something?”

Addie gives him an offended look and rolls her eyes. “Her name is Ariel! And you would know that if you watched the movie with me like you promised.”

“Some of us have homework to do,” Tate says defensively, and wipes his sweaty forehead on his sleeve.

“You never do homework,” she retorts, “You just masturbate and listen to Tool all the time.”

Her statement catches him so off-guard that he trips over a crack in the sidewalk and almost falls. “Don’t say that!” he hisses, “And that was just the one time.”

Addie fixes him with a knowing stare. “The one time that I _saw._ ”

Tate puts his hands up in defeat and says, “Okay, okay, just change the subject, you little shit.”

“Okay,” Addie says smugly, “You can tell me how you hurt your hand.”

Tate realizes he’s been played, and is hit again by how clever his sister is. It doesn’t matter how he runs in circles around her, she sees through his bullshit. Thankfully, they’re already at her school.

“Sorry, Addie,” Tate tells her completely unapologetically, “We can talk about it next time. Hurry up and get to class before you’re late.”

She pouts grumpily at him, and argues, “You’re late all the time.”

“Exactly,” Tate replies, “You don’t want to be like me.”

Addie laughs. “That’s for sure. You didn’t even remember your backpack,” she says with a wave, and walks into the building.

Tate didn’t notice the absence of his backpack until Addie pointed it out, and it takes him a minute to remember that he left it at the beach. A smile breaks across his face at the realization. Though he was looking forward to hearing what everyone at school has to say about him shish kebabing his own hand, retracing his steps by the water’s edge suddenly sounds much more appealing.

* * *

**Violet**

Every little thing is a reminder that Violet is displaced in time.

The laminate floor of the grocery store is a dated checkerboard pattern in shades of blue, gleaming weakly under the cheap lights. Instead of awful remixes of popular tunes, tinny elevator-type music plays over a loudspeaker, broken occasionally by the eardrum shattering request for a clean up on aisle four. The Cookie Crisp cereal mascot is a cop and robber duo she’s never seen before, all the tampons come in cardboard tubes, and foods full of trans fats proudly line the shelves. The man in line ahead of her pays for his groceries with a paper check that takes him ten minutes to fill out, and Violet spends that time staring at Bill Clinton giving a presidential address on the muted CRT TV set up nearby because she doesn’t have a cell phone to play with. The chunky thing looks like it weighs over half of what she does.

Her purchases cost a fraction of what they would in 2018 thanks to a lack of modern inflation. Packs of cigarettes are under two dollars, and the cashier doesn’t even ask for an ID. The modest amount of money Cordelia gave her will last much longer than she expected, much to Violet’s relief. She’s never had a job and she doesn’t think she was really built for customer service.

She eats discontinued 90s snacks and takes the bus home.

* * *

**Tate**

She’s there in the shade, wearing the same clothes as yesterday, using his holey backpack as a pillow while she lies back and flips through his journal. If it was anyone else, he would be angered by the invasion of privacy, but he’s just incredibly curious about what she sees. What does she think of the boy who wrote those words, scribbled those drawings?

“I agree,” she says, forgoing a normal greeting, “Holden Caulfield is a self-entitled prick.”

She’s reading his _Catcher in the Rye_ analysis. Tate wrote a pretty scathing review, if he remembers correctly.

“Holden is always droning on about how everyone around him is such a phony. Like he’s the only tortured, misunderstood soul in this society, special but unappreciated as a genius of his time,” Tate says, “We’re all misunderstood and we’re all phonies.”

She smirks prettily at the comment, still staring down at the notebook. “They should put that on the cover instead of whatever bullshit the New York Times has to say,” she replies with understated sarcasm.

He takes a seat beside her, maybe a little nearer than a stranger should, so he can see the page she’s looking at. In red pen ink, his Lit teacher’s note says _“75. Watch your language!”_

“Violet, right?” he asks cautiously. She glances up at him and quickly away, as if the sight of him is painful. She nods.

“You didn’t tell me your name,” she says, something he was already abundantly aware of. Her lack of knowledge is another good sign that he hasn’t imagined her.

“Tate,” he replies with a pleased grin.

She takes another quick glimpse of his face, and offers a small closed-mouth smile of her own before she turns her head to look out at the ocean. She shuts the composition notebook and holds it out to him. “I like your bird drawings,” she tells him.

He takes the journal from her, intentionally brushing their fingers together in the process. Her petite hand is sweaty from the heat, leaves damp imprints on the cover. He wants to hold her hand and feel the sweat build between them, moist and hot and slick, just to know how the two of them would fit together.

“I like birds,” he says simply, as good a response as any, “Shouldn’t you be at school?”

She sits up and her sweater sinks down to her elbows, exposing damp, pale skin that glistens in the light. He can barely make out what looks like a swirl of black ink on the arm furthest from him, but it’s mostly obscured by her lazy posture. 

“Shouldn’t you?” she shoots back, looking amused by the question.

“I had to get my backpack,” he says.

“Of course,” she replies, “Can’t face the school day without your blood-stained Bio book.”

“We’re dissecting frogs,” he explains, glossing over the fact that the blood is his own.

“Mhmm,” she says vaguely. Abruptly, she takes his bandaged hand and begins to unwrap it with careful fingers.

The bandage falls away without much effort at all, the loose strips pooling on the sand between them. The wound is a gruesome angry red, with rows of neat black stitches on both the back and front, right between the metacarpals of his index and middle fingers. She looks more curious than disgusted when she grasps his wrist, and holds the injury up to the light for a clearer view.

“I think you missed the frog,” she jokes dryly, and turns his hand back and forth to see both sides of the wound. “But that was the point, wasn’t it?”

Her perceptiveness would be more disturbing if he wasn’t so entranced by the feeling of her fingers looped around his wrist, the wet heat of her skin against his. He wants her to slide her hand a little lower so he can slot their fingers together, careless of the throbbing pain it would cause.

“Sometimes you have to do something a little crazy to break the monotony,” he says with a shrug once she releases him. He doesn’t have a replacement bandage, but he doesn’t really give a fuck.

When Violet brushes the curtain of hair that’s fallen in her face back behind her shoulder, he sees the full marking on her bicep. _364,_ it cautions, the numbers drawn thin as a piece of thread.

“Sometimes you have to do _someone_ a little crazy,” she says with an unexpectedly sly grin.

He can’t help but laugh. “Are you volunteering?” he asks cheekily.

She laughs too, and actually holds the eye-contact they share between them for once. “I want a milkshake,” she says suddenly, and gets to her feet. “It’s too fucking hot for September.”

“Is that an invitation?” he asks, already shoving his journal back in the sand-covered backpack.

“Obviously,” she tells him, “You’re buying.”

* * *

“You’re not from around here,” Tate posits while they wait for their shakes. Custard shakes, not milk shakes. Custard is far superior, thicker and more sumptuous in flavor. He aims to impress.

Violet looks up from the laminate countertop she’s been picking apart with her thumbnail. “Why do you say that?”

On their quiet walk to the restaurant, she had followed his lead entirely, easily distracted by things like signs and logos and the clothing on mannequins behind store windows. She chewed her lip while she stared, like she was concentrating on placing a fleeting memory from a long time ago.

“You look at everything with new eyes, but not like a tourist,” he says, “It’s like you keep expecting to see something but it’s been replaced by something else, over and over. It’s interesting to watch.”

She blushes and goes back to scratching the laminate. “I’m from New Jersey, but I visited here once a long time ago,” she explains, although something in her voice tells him there’s more to the story than that.

The man behind the counter slides their shakes over to them, and Tate nods thankfully in his direction. He pulls out a few bills he stole from Constance’s purse to pay for them, and the man looks disgusted by ugly wound on Tate’s hand. Tate turns away, unoffended, and is amused when Violet tries to take a sip through her straw and makes a face when nothing comes through.

“They’re really thick. You have to wait a couple of minutes for it to melt a bit,” Tate explains, then asks curiously, “How long have you been in L.A. this time?”

Violet glances around the room, like she’s piecing together what to say before she says it, as if every word has to come out perfect. Finally she settles on, “I got here yesterday. Everything’s a lot different than I’m used to, to say the least.”

Tate nods and absentmindedly stirs at his drink while he thinks of what to ask next. “You on vacation with your parents?”

Violet shakes her head and starts playing with the condensation dripping on the counter from her glass. She answers, “No vacation or family. I’m staying at a friend’s place while she’s out of town. You?”

Tate offers a bitter smile, pleased that she’s here to stay but not that she’s lonely. “I’ve lived in L.A. my whole life, but I visited Virginia once and got to see the leaves change. My sister and my mom are in the picture, my dad’s not. I’ve got a shitty stepdad to make up for all that fatherly love I must have missed out on, though.”

He doesn’t bring up Beau, never brings up Beau anymore. According to medical records, Beau died of SIDS in infancy, just another lie concocted so Constance could play in her pretend fantasy world where they’re the perfect nuclear family.

“That sucks,” Violet says sympathetically, “About the stepdad, I mean. I always wondered what it would be like to have a sister. I almost did, but my mom had a miscarriage.”

“I’m sorry,” Tate says sincerely. “Any brothers?”

Violet doesn’t answer, just takes a long pull from her shake. He watches the way her pale throat moves as she takes several gulps, and he laughs at the expression on her face when she finishes. “Brain freeze,” she complains with a wince. Then she starts laughing too.

His grin is probably disproportionately wide for the small humor of the situation, but he likes the sound of her laughter, the pleasant knot it twists in his gut. He turns slightly on his bar stool so that their knees are touching beneath the counter, the fabric of her salt-stiffened dress brushing against his skin through the hole in his jeans.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Violet says with a wry grin, “Biological dads suck too, so you’re not missing out on much.”

He rests his chin on his uninjured hand, elbow on the counter. “Oh yeah?”

Violet nods. “Adults like babies because they can project all of their deluded visions of the future on them while they’re still a blank slate. But when the baby fat goes away and you develop your own personality, suddenly you’re a disappointment instead of a little ball of hope. Just because they fertilized an egg doesn’t mean they’re _parents_ , or that they deserve to have kids, you know what I mean?”

She gives him a meaningful look like she’s trying to convince him of something, like he doesn’t already agree with every fucking word out of her mouth.

“Cheers to that,” Tate says, knocking his glass against hers.

Her pleased smile is a lovely reply as she slides down from her stool, landing much too close to him. She uses his thigh to help her gain her balance for just a moment before her hand drops away, but the brief touch leaves phantom tingles on his skin.

“I gotta go,” Violet says, “Thanks for the shake.”

When she turns to leave, he reaches out and lightly takes her wrist with his injured hand, the cut throbbing pleasantly where it chafes against her sweater. “Will I see you again?” he asks, hoping the question doesn’t ooze the desperation he feels.

“If you can find me,” she challenges, slipping out of his grasp. She gives him an ironic curtsy and exits the restaurant, leaving him to finish his drink alone. He’s smiling.

* * *

**Violet**

When Violet arrives back at the apartment building, the manager is waiting by her door, leaning against a rolling garment rack draped with dresses wrapped in plastic. To anyone else, she would look like a confused elderly woman staring at a swath of peeling wallpaper at a dead-end hallway.

“Oh, Violet,” Doloris––according to her nametag––greets her, “I’m so glad I haven’t missed you! I didn’t get the chance to bring these to you yesterday.”

“Bring what?” Violet asks.

“They’re secondhand I’m afraid, but they should fit you. My granddaughter was about your size before she had the baby,” Doloris elaborates, “She was so certain she’d perk right up and get back into those tiny dresses. I warned her though, you can’t go back once you’ve had a bun in the oven! And of course, Grandma was right! Keep that in mind for the future, alright darling?”

“These are for me?” Violet asks, surprised by the plentiful haul.

Doloris nods distractedly. “You can’t go walking around in the same dress all the time, right? I mean, what would that pretty boy think?”

“Excuse me?”

Doloris opens the door to Violet’s room with just a look and a touch of magic, and begins to wheel the garment rack in without permission. “I’m sure he would adore you even if you wore a potato sack, darling. But like Max Bialystock says, _‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it!’_ ” she compliments with a giggle.

Violet wanders in behind her, quickly shutting the door before anyone can see them disappear into nothing. “How do you know about Tate?” she asks warily.

Doloris busies herself by hanging the dresses in Violet’s small closet, not looking up from her self-set task. “I told you darling, clairvoyance. There’s a shoe box there––you’ll try those on won’t you?”

Peeking out from beneath the dresses on the rack is a box that Violet accepts curiously. Inside, she finds a pair of black Chuck Taylors that she hurriedly trades out for the ugly brown sandals she nabbed from the beach. They’re a little big, but they’ve already been broken in and she immediately feels more like herself than she has the whole time since rebirth.

“Wow. Thank you, Deloris. This is great,” Violet tells her honestly.

Deloris steps away from the closet, balling up the stripped off garment bags for disposal, and admires her handiwork. “Of course, darling. Any friend of the next Supreme is a friend of mine by proxy.”

Violet observes Deloris for a moment and asks, “So if you’re clairvoyant, how much do you know about the future?”

Deloris looks at her sternly, seems to evaluate her for a moment, and offers a disheartening frown. “I’ve seen the future you come from. I can see bits and pieces of what might lie ahead for you now, but I’m not omniscient nor am I the most powerful witch in the world.”

Violet hesitates. “So could you like...give me a hint? Of what the next step is?”

Deloris laughs loudly, as if Violet said something very funny. “Oh heavens darling, of course not!”

At Violet’s visible disappointment, Deloris adds, “I can’t tell you what to do, but I can be a friend. And an excellent one at that. You have pain ahead of you, and it won’t do for you to face it alone! My apartment is number 007, if you ever want to talk. I’ve been sweet on Sean Connery since even before you were born you know, hence the Bond reference.”

Violet offers a small smile at the invitation. “I still haven’t been born yet,” she points out. She won’t be born for two more years, actually.

Deloris laughs again. “Right, right. Don’t be a stranger!” she sings as she leaves the room, shutting the door quietly behind her.

Violet flicks through the dresses hanging in the closet, admiring the muted shades of blue and green and gray. And of course, plenty of black befitting the granddaughter of a witch. The fabrics are different from what she’s used to, different patterns and silhouettes from what she would wear in her own time, but she can’t argue that this is probably what she would have worn if she had been a teenager in the 90s.

She changes into something that doesn’t smell of the sea, and heads out to read about explosives at the public library.

* * *

**Tate**

He makes it to school just as the bell signaling the end of lunch screams overhead. He seamlessly falls in line with the rest of the students heading to class, and he wonders if the afterglow of his morning conversation with Violet is visible on his face.

While his History teacher drones on and on about 14th century China––something Tate already studied over the summer just out of curiosity––Tate flips through his journal, trying to find an empty page to doodle on. He comes across a page he wrote a few lines of poetry on earlier in the week. Beneath the lines he wrote, he finds a few more scrawled in a different handwriting.

In his precise capitalized letters, he wrote:

“THERE IS MORE THAN ONE WAY TO KILL A BOY  
WHITE SNOWFLAKES OR RAIN PELLETS SPILLED ON THE COUNTER,  
INK STAINS WRITTEN BY ROSE THORNS ON CREAM-LIKE LIMBS  
SELF-INFLICTED AMBUSCADES THE COLOR OF LILAC”

In an unfamiliar font, lowercase and loopy, it says:

“ _did you know that you can do it with a series of missed chances?  
_ _times you didn’t pick up the phone,  
_ _forgot to say goodnight?  
_ _my hands pressed in prayer are stained with your blood_ ”

Tate traces his finger over the words, feeling the indents on the page where Violet pressed down hard with the pen, a small smile pulling at his lips.

“Tate?” he hears, and glances up. Mr. Habster stares at him expectantly, and Tate realizes he’s been asked something.

“What was the question?” Tate asks, already sure he knows the answer.

“Which emperor founded the Ming dynasty, expanded the military, and reformed the government?” the teacher repeats impatiently.

“Oh, that’s easy. The Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang. He reigned from 1368 to 1398,” Tate answers confidently.

Mr. Habster looks disappointed by his correct answer, obviously hoping to call him out for not paying attention. That’s the issue, though. Tate doesn’t pay attention, doesn’t do the homework, because it’s all too easy. His grades suffer because he’s bored, not because he doesn’t understand. It’s all bullshit, anyway.

Tate goes back to his benign distraction, doodling little flowers he hopes look something like violets in the margins of the co-authored poem.

* * *

Tate and Addie are barely through the front door before Constance is already on him.

“Your principal called me while I was doing my hair this morning to tell me you skipped school again. I had to leave the goddamn foils in my hair for too long, and now it looks like shit, Tate!” Constance starts, slurring her words just a bit. She’s already a few whiskeys in, judging by the look of her.

Tate glances at Addie and shoos her away, already resigned to the upcoming argument. Addie nods and flees up the stairs before she can get dragged into it.

“He needs to get his story straight,” Tate replies calmly, “I didn’t skip. I was just a little late.”

Constance hisses, “Your school thinks you’re a retard, Tate! Do you think I like hearing that my beautiful son is failing his classes? So many gifts, but you can’t be bothered to use a single one of them. A waste!”

“You know why I skip?” Tate asks, trying to tamp down on the frustration building inside him, “I have to listen so much bullshit fall out of your mouth every morning that I don’t see the point in going to school just to hear more of it.”

“You’re an ungrateful child,” Constance retorts, “I clean up your messes, day after day, and you’ve never once said thank you!”

“Oh, that’s what you want? A thank you? Well _thank you_ Constance, for chasing off my real dad when I was six. _Thank you_ for marrying that spineless prick Larry, so you could move back into this piece of shit house that you love more than your kids! _Thank you_ for lying to the doctor because the truth is inconvenient for you! _Thanks_ for chaining my only brother up in the attic because he doesn’t fit your fantasy! Thank you so much, Constance,” Tate shouts, losing his patience.

Constance replies, “You can blame me all you want for your own shortcomings, Tate, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re a failure! Your father saw it, and that’s why he left you. He couldn’t bear to see you waste your life!”

Tate seethes, “He didn’t leave me, he left you!”

Constance gives him a sly smirk and tosses back another shot of whiskey before challenging, “Are you sure about that?”

 _You could shut her up, you know,_ the voice whispers.

It urges, _You know where the carotid artery is. Just apply a little pressure, and…_

Tate smacks his clenched fist against the side of his head, fighting the voice away.

“SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” Tate screams, and runs blindly toward his room before he can do something he’ll regret.

He can hear Constance cackling behind him, her small muttering of the word, “Pathetic,” right before he slams the door.

* * *

**Rose**

Rose likes the attic. The light is softer in there because of the dirty windows. When the doctor took her heart, he showed her how to see without eyes. She enjoys watching the little specks of dust float around like snowflakes, has fun drawing pictures with her fingertip in the filth that settles on the floorboards. There are a lot of neat treasures hidden up here; old silks and laces she can use to play dress-up, photos of others like her that live in the basement, and forgotten toys damaged by the fire that gave her two new friends to play with.

Her favorite part of the attic is the boy who lives in it. He came here with Mommy and the big kids when they moved in with the bad man. She thought Beau was a monster the first time she saw him, like that thing in the basement that eats rats and bugs, and sometimes, people. But he’s sweet and gentle like the puppy she always wanted, and together they can play fetch, and he howls along when she sings the ABCs.

Rose knows she can’t go out by herself. She tried once even though she wasn’t allowed to, and just ended up back in the house somehow. She thinks that maybe she could leave if she had a dog to protect her. She tried asking Mommy to let her take Beau for a walk, but Mommy couldn’t see or hear her. So instead, Rose shows Beau picture books about taking dogs on walks, and she makes up stories to tell him.

One of the big kids, Tate, comes up to visit sometimes and play with Beau. Rose used to have a brother named Tate, but he left a long time ago with Mommy, and Mommy didn’t bring him back with her when she returned. This Tate can’t see her either, but sometimes she thinks he might know she’s there.

He comes up the ladder while Rose is in the middle of telling Beau about a frog she found in the backyard, and she hushes as soon as he peeks his head in.

“Tate!” Beau yells when he spots him, pulling against his chains to try to greet him with a hug. Tate quickly sinks down in front of him for easy reach, and he pets Beau’s messy hair.

“Hi, Beau,” he says in a quiet voice, “Are you doing okay?”

It takes a moment for Rose to realize that Tate is crying, his face wet and puffy. He has a new cut on his arm and it’s bleeding through his shirt. “What’s wrong? Did you get an owie?” she asks timidly.

Tate doesn’t answer her of course, just takes a shaky breath and gives Beau a weak smile.

“You’re lucky you don’t have to see what it’s like out there,” he says, “All of the assholes who want to change you and want to rip away the only thing that keeps you sane because they think you don’t deserve to have it. There’s so much shit and garbage everywhere you look.”

“Sad?” Beau asks slowly.

“Yeah, Beau. I’m sad,” Tate says with a nod.

“Play?” Beau asks.

“Not right now,” Tate answers, “But can I sit with you for awhile?”

Beau lays his head on one of Tate’s thighs, and Rose lies down and presses her face to the other. Tate looks down at his leg, like he can feel the weight of her but doesn’t know why.

After a long period of silence, once the sun has almost set, Tate says, “There is one source of light in all this darkness. Her name is Violet. I think you’d like her.”

Beau and Rose both turn to look up at him. He’s not crying anymore. “Friend?” Beau asks.

“Friend,” Tate confirms.

* * *

**Violet**

Right as Violet reaches to turn off the bedside lamp for the night, she hears the sound of a piece of paper sliding under her door. Curiously, Violet tosses the quilt to the side and kneels by the envelope hiding halfway in the shadows. She peels it open with her fingernails and reads the note inside written in the wobbly cursive of an elderly hand:

_“If you destroy that house before you free those haunting it, their souls will go up in flames as well. No heaven, no hell, just fire. That’s the only guidance I can give you.”_

“Aw, motherfucker,” Violet swears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I didn't explain it well enough, the reason Rose doesn't equate Tate with the twin brother she had before she died is that he looks like a teenager now, and she can't comprehend the passage of time. Constance, Tate, and Addie would have moved out of the house 10 years ago, so she doesn't recognize anyone except Constance who mostly looks the same. She didn't see Tate, Beau and Addie grow up, therefore it didn't happen.
> 
> There should be more substantial Violet POV in the next chapter I think! Thank you guys so much for reading and commenting. It means the world to me. :-)


	4. Somebody Catch My Breath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry that this chapter is 3 months late *and* half as long as the others, but I wanted to get something out, so I'm posting it as is. Also, it's entirely from Violet's POV. Thanks for your patience!

_ Though I’m weak and beaten down  
_ _ I’ll slip away into the sound  
_ _ The ghost of you is close to me  
_ _ I’m inside out, you’re underneath _

_ -”Goner” by Twenty One Pilots _

* * *

**1993  
** _September_

* * *

**Violet**

Violet isn’t prepared for the low thrumming panic in her veins the moment she lays eyes on the Murder House. Her body screams to her to get as far away as possible lest she get trapped in there forever. The exterior looks mostly the same. There is an array of lovely potted plants on the front porch, unlike the shriveled stalks abandoned by the last owner in her own time. She can’t see from here, but she knows that there is no gazebo in the backyard. Other than that, it looks completely identical to her prison of the past seven years.

Tate and Addie are at school, Larry is at work. There is a car in the driveway that must belong to Constance, and Violet tries to be inconspicuous about loitering as she waits for the older woman to leave on some errand or another. The doors will be locked, but the exterior access to the crawl space beneath the home should be open, and Violet can enter from there. All she can hope is that the ghosts will show themselves to her.

Constance finally leaves the house about an hour before school lets out for the day, cigarette dangling from her lips. Violet is on a time constraint, and she hurries to make her way inside, despite the way her stomach rolls in anxiety. Making her way through the crawlspace is strange, empty of both Violet’s bones and the remains of the exterminator Tate murdered. It occurs to her for the first time that the house must be much less crowded at this point in time. Her family, the exterminator, Travis, Hayden, the murder reenacters, Chad and Patrick, Beau, and Tate are all still alive in 1993. That leaves thirteen ghosts to liberate. Still a sizable amount. Violet has her work cut out for her.

Violet carefully climbs from the crawlspace into the dark basement, sweeping the beam from her flashlight around the room cautiously. She’s not afraid of the ghosts, but she knows better than to disregard the threat Thaddeus poses. It’s eerily quiet in the darkness, her progress uninterrupted as she makes her way up the stairs and into the main house.

“Moira?” Violet calls quietly.

The old housekeeper enters from the kitchen, examining Violet from head to foot with a reproachful eye. “You’re tracking dust all over Madame’s house,” Moira says instead of a greeting.

Violet looks down at herself, finding her navy dress to be painted in swaths of dust and filth from the crawlspace. “I’m sorry,” Violet replies

“You shouldn’t be here,” Moira admonishes, “I can assure you that you won’t make it out of this house with anything you take.”

A shiver goes down Violet’s spine, and she takes a furtive glance around the room. She can feel the hostile presence of other ghosts watching her, ready to defend their territory, though they aren’t visible. She doesn’t doubt Moira’s words.

“I’m not here to steal anything,” Violet explains, “I’m here to talk to you and I don’t know how much time we have. Can we sit?”

Moira humors her, and they go to the kitchen to take a seat in the breakfast nook. Moira says, “I can’t imagine what would make you come here just to speak to an old maid. I’m not a very interesting person, I’m afraid.”

Violet almost laughs at the blatant lie. “I don’t know how to say this without just coming out and saying it. I know you’re dead and there are twelve other ghosts here, plus Frankenstein’s demon in the basement. I’m here to help.”

Moira’s eyes widen, one foggy and tragic, the other a lovely shade of blue. “Are you a medium?” she asks hopefully, her voice barely more than a whisper.

Violet considers the question, finding the cover story much simpler to explain than a backstory of rebirth and time travel. “Yes,” she answers simply.

“Why seek out me specifically?” Moira asks, “There are souls who have been trapped here much longer.”

Violet glances at the clock on the wall. Forty-five minutes left.

“Because somehow you’ve managed to hold onto your sanity, while the others are batshit crazy even on a good day. You know how to manipulate your appearance at will. You know how you died, why you’re here, and how to move on,” Violet says urgently, “And I need your help. How did you figure out that digging up your bones is what you need to get out of here? The other ghosts are here even though their remains were buried in a cemetery.”

Moira’s awed expression changes into something cold and hard. “If you know how to free me, why is my body still rotting outside? That bitch should be the one rotting away, not me!”

“I’m going to help you, Moira,” Violet promises, “But there are others trapped here too, and you’re the only one who can help me figure out why. I want to save all of you.”

Moira takes a deep breath and calms herself. “I can’t tell you how to help them. Only they can.”

“But half of them don’t even know they’re dead!” Violet argues, bouncing her heel up and down on the floor in impatience. “Just tell me, how did you know?”

Moira purses her lips and appears to consider her answer for a moment. She says, “The house knows your weaknesses. It uses those weaknesses to keep you here. My last thoughts before I died were about how badly I wished I was someone or somewhere else. That womanizer had his hands all over me, and all I could think about was how I wished I could leave my body and disappear.”

“So the house’s punishment was for you and your body to be trapped here with Hugo’s ghost and your murderer,” Violet determines with a shaky voice.

Moira blinks back tears and wipes away the few that escape with the back of her hand. “The house tries to convince me that I’m happy here,” Moira says, “I was so lonely when I was alive. Now I’m trapped here with twelve other ghosts and I’ll never be alone again.”

Violet thinks about what the Supreme told her, that her inner strength made her almost untouchable while others with weaker constitutions like Tate so easily bent to the house’s will. Violet has never heard the voice, the one that made her father sleepwalk, her mother sick with paranoia, and Tate kill so many.

“What does the voice sound like?” Violet asks.

“It sounds like me,” Moira says tiredly, “It’s false and intrusive, encouraging my more shameful thoughts and fantasies. Memories of my mother are all that keep me from giving in. Her voice is stronger than this cursed house’s pitiful attempts at manipulation. If I had to guess, the other ghosts have either been here so long that they’ve forgotten what guided them, or they never had anything worth holding onto to begin with.”

“So I just need to remind them of what they lost and help them get it back, or find them something new to guide them?” Violet suggests hopefully.

Moira offers a weak smile. “After so long, I’m not sure it’s even possible. You might want to reconsider if all of the souls in this house are even worth saving, my dear.”

Violet clenches her jaw, determined. “They are,” she says firmly.

“You’re a brave girl,” Moira tells her, “But if you’re not careful, you may become one of them. This house doesn’t take kindly to strangers.”

Violet nods stiffly. She doesn’t tell Moira that she knows this house intimately and each of its ghosts, that she’s seen all of the wickedness it fosters. She takes another quick glance at the clock to see how much time she has left. She has so many questions.

“I have to leave,” Violet says abruptly, getting up from the table, “Tate and Addie will be home soon.”

“They have after school activities on Thursdays, but their awful stepfather will be home from work shortly,” Moira replies, “It’s for the best if you leave now. You can go out the back door.”

Violet nods. “I’ll be back, Moira. I’m going to help you. All of you.”

Moira brushes shaking hands over her apron, smoothing out invisible wrinkles. “I’m afraid I will have to see it to believe it, dear.”

* * *

Tate doesn’t know she’s there yet.

He’s way out on the field, and she can only really see the shape of him briefly when he reaches this side of the track on each lap. It’s still so strange seeing him outside the context of the house or the beach, and watching him run in little shorts and knee high socks with his floppy hair tied back in a half bun is no exception. His colorblock windbreaker would definitely make bank on Etsy in 2018.

She hasn’t seen Tate for over a week, too caught up in studies on exorcisms and witchcraft and voodoo, Native American burial rituals and Viking funerals, desperate to find a way to complete her mission in a way that will let her live with herself afterward. Every moment away from him felt like being tapped on the shoulder, the insistent reminder that someone was thinking of her.

The digital clock over the scoreboard flashes 4:30 PM, and the students on the field retreat to the bleachers to gather their things. Violet recognizes the exact moment when Tate realizes she’s there, the way his cheeks dimple and he bashfully dips his head in excitement. He’s a sweaty disaster, and he gratefully accepts his water bottle when she passes it to him, though the liquid must be stagnant and hot after so much time in the sun.

“Get tired of playing hide and seek?” he asks in between heavy breaths, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as his heart rate settles. He takes several long gulps from the bottle before pouring the rest over his head and shoulders, sighing in relief at the feel of it.

Violet laughs when he shakes the water and sweat from his hair like a golden retriever, pelting her with flying droplets. “You’re a dick,” she says without malice, and asks, “Were you still looking for me?”

He gives her a genuine smile that makes her heart flip, and tells her, “I never stopped.” She tries and fails to hide a grin in return, which just seems to make his smile grow.

“Go take a shower, and then we’ll talk,” Violet says, waving him away, “You stink.”

He nods and grabs his backpack, and is just about to head off toward the locker room when he suddenly turns around, looking pensive. “You’ll be here when I get back?”

“Yeah, Tate,” Violet replies, “I didn’t come here just to watch you run in a circle for an hour and go home.”

“Okay,” he says, looking pleased.

Once he’s gone, Violet drifts into the girl’s locker room, intent on splashing some water in her face and flicking a comb through her hair a couple of times before she meets him outside. There are a few girls around, showering and changing their clothes, and Violet carefully averts her gaze from them, not holding out much hope that she’d fit in any better in the 90s than in 2011. Unintentionally, she bumps into a girl heading away from the sinks.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the girl says, holding out her manicured hands to steady Violet before she has the chance to fall over.

“No, no, it’s my fault,” Violet says and looks up from the floor, immediately freezing on the spot.

Chloe Stapleton, difficult to recognize without her bloodstained cheerleading outfit and the stripes of gore across her face, stands prettily before her in a cheetah-print mini dress. She looks every bit the popular girl archetype, like someone who has plans for dinner and a movie later, who’s going to get married to her first college boyfriend and pop out ten billion kids that she’ll spoil to death. Except Chloe doesn’t do that. Chloe dies at seventeen from a bullet fired point-blank into her chest, one year from now.

“Agree to disagree. I swear my head’s on backwards,” Chloe says kindly, then adds, “I love your sweater! Where did you get it?”

Violet clears her throat and stutters out, “Oh, it was...uh, a gift. I mean, a hand-me-down. I don’t know where she got it. Sorry.”

Chloe sighs. “Oh man, all the good stuff is either vintage or from abroad. I can’t wait to get out of this fake city and go see the world, you know? Go on a shopping spree in Paris someday.”

Violet gives a shaky nod and doesn’t care if she comes off as rude in her brusqueness. “Um, yeah. I’ve gotta go. Sorry.”

She almost collides with the sink in her haste to get away, wrenching both taps open so she can dunk her face in the water and get her shit together before she has to go back out there and look Tate in the eye.

_ He hasn’t done it yet _ , she reminds herself, fighting back the panic crawling its way up her throat.  _ Chloe is still alive, and Tate hasn’t killed anyone. The house hasn’t won. _

By the time she gets the lid back on her emotions, he is already outside, staring dejectedly at the empty bleachers. He’s in one of his grungy, Kurt Cobain wannabe outfits, his hair still dripping wet as if he didn’t even pause to towel-dry it in his haste to get back to her.

Violet creeps up silently behind him. “Boo!” she hisses in his ear, gently pushing against his back.

He jumps and whips his head around to glare at her. “Not funny,” he says, even though he’s smiling, looking so relieved it makes her stomach hurt.

“I totally scared you,” she says lightly, needing to tilt her head back to see his face because he’s standing so close.

He has that same denim and teenage boy scent, mixed this time with a dollar store shampoo/body wash combo. The smell is a grounding reminder that this is a different Tate Langdon, one who still has a chance at redemption, and Violet is able to feel a little less like she’s about to split at the seams.

“No you didn’t,” Tate retorts cockily, “I’m not afraid of anything.”

Violet rolls her eyes, remembering those same words pouring from her own mouth once upon a time. Those are the words of a child in a self-made suit of armor. She wants to pick his apart and heal the sores beneath it.

“That’s what all the big boys say,” she tells him.

She catches a glimpse of his hand, the one he was favoring the week before, and finds that he still hasn’t had the stitches removed. The new skin is shiny and baby pink, but also irritated like it doesn’t know what to do with the foreign thread trapped inside. It also looks like he’s been picking at it.

“Tate,” she admonishes, taking the hand in hers, “If you don’t get these out, they could get infected.”

Tate gives her a self-deprecating smile. “Does that bother you?” he asks, sliding his hand into hers and tangling their fingers together. The thread through his palm tickles her skin just a little.

Her breath catches at the forgotten sensation. It’s been  _ so long _ since she’s felt the way his larger hand cradled her own, the way it made her feel protected. She squeezes his fingers. He squeezes back.

“Yeah Tate,” she says softly, and reluctantly pulls away, “It bothers me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really stuck on whether or not I want Violet to tell Tate that she's trying to exorcise the ghosts in the house or if I want her to keep him out of the loop, so that's why this chapter ends where it does. Normally I wouldn't do this, but I'm taking suggestions! Which do you think would be more interesting to read? Please comment and let me know.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed! Comments/Constructive Criticism are appreciated :-)
> 
> Edit: In episode 3 of season 1 of Murder House, it shows that Hugo and Moira were killed in 1983. But Tate says his dad left when he was 10 which would have been 1987. So I'm gonna go with the idea that Tate was either lying or confused.


End file.
